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I’m very interested in going to Derawan in a couple of weeks, but haven’t been able to find reliable information on a couple of things, and was hoping you could help me out.

Essentially we’re looking for beautiful clear water and beaches we can lay out on. Water that we can swim in that feels clean and magical–something we’ve never been able to experience before.
1) Weather: I’ve heard some people say that this time of the wet season is the time of year that is worst to be here, and I can’t tell when that is. Would mid-February be pretty choppy and/or muddy?

2) Garbage: We’ve been hearing horror stories regarding garbage on Derawan, but we don’t have the money to afford more than a week at most on Maratua. We’re staying in Penang right now, and the garbage on the beaches is extremely upsetting, and I can’t imagine wanting to swim in water that has a bunch of trash (and poop) floating in it. How bad is Derawan? Is it possible to walk away from the village to a beach that’s cleaner? What about if we swam off a dock instead? Has the water reached a point where it’s kinda gross to swim in (Like Thai beaches and Langkawi)?

Thank you so much for your time. We’re thoroughly in love with Derawan, and hope we can stay here for a couple weeks and then go to Maratua for a week. It’s just the difference between $50/night and $15/night that limits the amount of time we can spend there. We really just want to be able to wade around in crystal clear water that isn’t destroyed by garbage and human waste. We want to see a place that is truly beautiful, and help make it better before we leave it. It’s sad how much places are getting ruined around the world, and how difficult it has been to find a place that doesn’t have a ton of garbage everywhere.

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Marjolijn Christianen

Assistant Professor @WUR, Blogs about fieldwork & events during her current research projects on sea turtles in the Dutch Caribbean, on food webs and ecosystem restoration in the Wadden Sea & about her completed PhD project on seagrass & green turtle grazing. She also provides practical info on her previous fieldwork site: Derawan in East-Kalimantan, Indonesia